Andrew Yang: Think. Different.

1 May 2018; Andrew Yang, Democratic Presidential Candidate on centre stage during day one of Collision 2018 at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Collision via Sportsfile

This post is part of Ordinary Time’s symposium of contributor’s Democratic primary endorsements. The views and endorsement expressed are the author’s alone.

The UBI isn’t going to work. And by “it isn’t going to work”, I don’t mean that “the majority of people in the country wouldn’t have their lives improved by an extra $1000 in their bank accounts every month” but I mean that “congress would never, in a million years, write legislation doing this and, even if they did, the Senate wouldn’t send it up to the executive to sign it”.

It’d never get off the ground. But you know what? Andrew Yang knows that there are a lot of problems out there that could be solved with nothing more than a little bit of money. As such, this tells me that even if his solution wouldn’t make it through the snake that is Washington DC, he at least sees the world with startlingly clear eyes.

People who work in poverty organizations have said to me: “The best thing we could do is to simply give the people we serve more money.” They are often among the most excited about my campaign. 👍

If you want to get all wonky about the various problems with the Hashtag Freedom Dividend, you could spend a couple of hours coming up with them. Would we give it to everybody? Even illegal immigrants? Does it go to babies? Wouldn’t it go to landlords’ pockets instead of various stores around town? Hey, I already said that it would never get out of committee. But he sees a number of problems coming up. Fewer and fewer people who don’t have a whole lot of skills will be needed less and less by the corporations that will be hiring people to maintain and repair the robots and touchscreens that will be replacing the people who used to be required. (Those robots and touchscreens put in a lot less to the tax coffers as well despite being able to work 24/7.)

He sees that problem coming down the pike and has said that we need to come up with a solution for it. The Hashtag Freedom Dividend is his solution. Sure, it won’t get off the ground… but he sees the problem in the first place.

Another solution he has embraced: Getting Occupational Licensing recognized across state lines. He wants to make it so that if you get an occupational license in any given state, it’s automatically transferrable to any other state you’d be inclined to move to. If you are stuck in a low-income state, get a license that will make you money in a high-income state and move and be able to get a job. (Heck, he even endorses a tax credit for moving expenses.)

While I’m sure that a lot of the laws about occupational licensing have been captured by the various shareholders in the states that don’t think that a plumbing license from Maine should be allowed to let the plumber plumb in Michigan (or vice-versa), the fact that Yang sees that forcing a skilled worker to stay in his or her licensing state is causing harm to multiple people and multiple states shows that he’s seeing the problem in the first place.

He comes out and says that he sees the problem. Sure, there’s a lot of little goofy things on the list… get rid of the penny? Lower the voting age to 16? But he also has some serious jaw-droppers on there. He notices that Harvard should be accepting a lot more students. Holy cow. Of course it should. He wants to automatically sunset old laws. Holy cow. Of course we should do that.

He’s not just mouthing boiler-plate platitudes, but he’s looking at the future and trying to prepare for it, rather than just trying to skate on what used to work and the old ways of thinking. He sees the problems and how they’re all intertwined with each other. The other candidates are just fighting the last war. Andrew Yang wants to prevent the next one.

Also, I can’t help but include this piece of evidence that he sees things clearly (warning: strong language):

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I hadn’t previously looked to see where Mr. Yang stood on climate change. His priorities are geoengineering first and reducing emissions second. From his web site, “…large-scale geo-engineering measures like shoring up glaciers and reducing solar exposure”.

I am intrigued by the shoring up glaciers part. Refrigeration on a massive scale, perhaps?Report

But Yang doesn’t run everything through the one lens. His web site claims that climate change is nearly the existential threat that automation is (that’s at least close to a quote). But his solution isn’t UBI-ish. Inslee, OTOH, says that the solution to not enough jobs is to create millions and millions of jobs replacing infrastructure and major consumer gear with the stuff needed to eliminate fossil fuels in the near term (eg, rebuild the power grids, replace cars that use ICEs, vastly upgrade energy efficiency and fuel use in houses).Report

Climate change is a threat rivaling dryer lint explosions. Drive two hours north and you’ve got another hundred years to not worry about it. Or, if you’re a believer, we’re down to 14 months and then it becomes irreversible and we all die, in which case what’s the point of even having an election in 2020?.

We wouldn’t need to upgrade home energy efficiency if people would just move a warmer climate. Oh wait, we’re having a warmer climate come to us!

We could create more jobs than Inslee’s plan if we’d just run around breaking windows, and we could revitalize the construction industry by burning down existing neighborhoods. Something about “return on investment” argues against it, though.Report

Weird personal note: I have this strong suspicion that I met Andrew Yang at my tai chi class in the early oughts. I can’t say for sure, but it kind of seems like it. He was just a guy who was good at tai chi who visited the class, because he knew some people, but couldn’t full time because of his startup, etc., etc.

Sometimes a candidate is in the race because they want to put an issue on the table, and have a national conversation about it. Inslee is like that, Yang is like that, in spades.

I like his ideas. I support UBI. Like the Freedom Dividend, he has all the chances of a donkey in a horse race.Report

I like how he’s asking us to think about things differently early, because we’re going to have to think about them differently eventually and getting practice on changing how you think about things is one of the best things you can do to prepare for the future (even if you don’t know how you’ll be thinking when it comes around).Report

Yang lost any possibility he had at my vote the day after the first debate, where he pushed a conspiracy theory that he was “silenced” by whatever network was running the debate, during the debate, and used it to try to drive fundraising.

To me, that says one of two fundamental things. Either he is perfectly willing to gin up baseless accusations and dabble in conspiracy theories and paranoia to get votes, or he actually believes them. Neither one of them is something I find a good trait in a President. If I liked that, Trump would have my vote.

I think a lot of hay has been made about the fact that character matters, when it comes to the Presidency, because it’s not the President’s platform that matters. We know their platform because it’s the party platform. Any generic Democrat or Republican will do 95% of that stuff, and the other 5% is often heavily dependent on Congress. UBI, for instance, is a meaningless plank unless it gets into the party platform. It’s the stuff that’s not in the platform that matters, the emergencies and unforeseen problems and various crisis situations.

And I can’t help but worry about a man who, when facing mic problems in a debate, comes up with “I was silenced by the Man. Give me money.”

I have the same problem with Gabbard, whom I believe is currently suing Google, although she’s turned the know to 11 now.Report

I don’t know much about this, only what you’re saying, so I could have this all wrong. At the same time, my sense is that if someone is supporting Yang financially it’s because they want his message to get out, not so much because they think he’ll win. And if his mic was dead, his message didn’t get out, so he needs more money to get that message out.

Whether it was intentional or not, it was the responsibility of the organizers to give him a good mic, and they didn’t do that.Report

As much fun as I've had laughing at all the understandable hilarious tweets about me today, the mic issue is not funny and yes it did happen. I tried a couple of times to jump in and my mic was not on. Particularly wanted in on the subject of race.

I mean, you could definitely hear moments early on where Gillibrand was speaking at the same time as Biden or Sanders but the sound was muted, which meant that it wasn’t her microphone picking her up; it was Biden’s.

And there was the way Harris’s bit about the “food fight” was surprisingly clear and loud despite every other candidate talking at once.Report

Basic common sense there. 10 mics on stage. They can’t all be live simultaneously. They were all undoubtedly set to trigger at a certain volume threshold, but you still had audio engineers having to mix them and turn up and down volume, with the primary cue being whomever was addressed by the moderator.

They’d have been better off simply not allowing cross-talk at all with that many people.

Instead what you got was several candidates who clearly didn’t realize their mic couldn’t be live every second and still have an audio input the engineers could work with on the fly. Not to mention “Speak up or the mic won’t hear you” is rather counter-intuitive given the purpose of a microphone, and that’s just for basic automatic prevention of picking up breathing or coughing.Report

I did. That’s a studio with ten mics, which means a busy audio engineer. Yang is fairly soft spoken, and he was also coughing quite a bit previously. He wasn’t speaking loud enough to pop through the threshold set on the mic, a threshold that was likely a bit higher to prevent his coughs from being picked up.

By the time the sound guys noticed, he’d given up. That’s inexperience from Yang. Quite forgivable inexperience. Mic discipline for a crowded stage like that, with multiple hot mics and a single audio feed is not exactly a common skill, despite the fact that it should be obvious to anyone that a 10 man debate couldn’t possibly have 10 live mics with high sensitivity on simultaneously.

It’s the jump to “I was deliberately silenced” that speaks of ill character. He was polling at 1%, which has now risen to 2%. He’s simply not important enough to be silenced, even if someone actually had the urge to silence candidates they didn’t agree with.

He levied an accusation of pure malice against an entire company, due to a rather common mic issue for a large debate, with reasoning that was frankly ludicrous unless you’re predisposed to conspiracy theories in general.Report

“Someone sabotaged my brakes” and “You didn’t press the brake pedal down far enough trigger or hold it down long enough to stop” are not the same thing.

Intent, for starters. Actual mechanics of a working car for another.

Of all the people in the world that might create a conspiracy to silence them, in all the ways one might conspire to do so, the notion that MSNBC tried to stifle the voices of two people polling within the MoE of “no supporters” is ludicrous as all hell.

If you want to entertain yourself with such stupidity, feel free.

And there is no next time. As I age, I realize life is short and there’s no point in talking to someone uninterested in conversation.Report

At this point, I’m not trying to create an analogy. I’m just trying to restate, fairly, what you’ve said.

Your argument is that Andrew Yang’s mic was cut, but it wasn’t cut with malice. It was just cut because he had a cough and he undercut himself by not continuing to talk when he realized that his mic was cut.

“We need to stop sending money to foreign countries and focus on helping the people here.” <– UBI "The government takes too much of my paycheck in taxes!" <–UBI "The cost of [insert medical thing I need to live] is out of control and I can't afford it without subsidy." <–UBI "Access to high-speed internet is very nearly a necessity in modern America, but many families can't afford it." <–UBI "The only way to save small-town America is to subsidize young people to move back home." <–UBI (This is something I've given a fair bit of thought to, being from one of those dying small towns: If money were no (or less of) an object, how many people would choose to move back to their small home town?) "I despise Daylight Savings with the fury of a thousand suns!" <–not UBI, but I'm on boardReport

We’ve discussed UBI here before but the primary objection seems to be that it would be so strongly opposed as to be impossible, and that trying to make it happen would take up time and goodwill best spent on something that might actually happen.Report

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s somewhere between $38,000 and $46,000 a year.

But I don’t know. Is there someone out there good at math who could explain what it would probably have to be? (Am I thinking about it wrong and the break even point is smack dab in the middle of the pack at 50% and that means that it’d be $55,000?)Report

There is a percentile below which the UBI puts money in your pocket and above which it takes money from your pocket before giving it back to you.

If memory serves the last time we talked about this someone presented a link to a UBI which we could implement without cutting existing programs and the break even point was $28k. I.e. someone making $28k would get a UBI of X and also have his taxes go up by X to pay for it.

Everyone above that level of income would be a net loser, everyone below would be a net winner. This was done by a serious supporter of the UBI.

It’s possible to mess with the numbers and get very different answers, but we have 327 million people in the US. Assume all of them, including children, get $1k a month. So the program costs $327 Billion dollars a month, or roughly $4 Trillion a year. So double all gov spending combined. Let’s assume we don’t cut existing programs.

Taxes need to rise by $4 Trillion a year, and if we’re planning on eating the rich there won’t be a year two of this program… which means the VAST BULK of people need to pay for their own UBI.

$28k means the bottom 25% are net winners. However the majority of those will be “winners” only technically. Similarly a lot of the losers will only be losing a small amount.

Politically I think the math of this is a loser. Economically… I’m not sure. We really should test this out at the scale of a city or three and see what happens.Report

Well, by starting it at age 18, that changes a handful of things. I imagine that it reduces the price by a hair… but even if that means that people who make as much as $38k/year are the ones at the break even point, I’m not sure what this gets us.

I mean, I kinda like the idea of *ME* (or you or him or her) having an extra $1000/month. I’m not sure what happens when *EVERYBODY* gets an extra $1000 month.Report

even if that means that people who make as much as $38k/year are the ones at the break even point,

Intuitively, moving from 28 to 38 will be pretty expensive. 10% of your population shifted from being losers to winners.

I mean, I kinda like the idea of *ME* (or you or him or her) having an extra $1000/month.

That’s the marketing and emotional kick.

The reality is unless you make darn close to zero you’re not getting an “extra” 1000 a month. The top 75% won’t benefit from this. Most of the bottom 25% STILL won’t really benefit from this.

This is NOT “an extra $1000 for me and mine”. This is “welfare without the micromanagement”.

Now maybe that’s enough, maybe we’ll find out just handing out money is the way to make the bottom 5%’s lives much better. I used to have negative income, maybe more money would have enabled me to create a successful business.

Or maybe a lot of people at the very bottom are at the very bottom for a reason; And we’ll find out mental illness and addiction don’t really respond to simply having money thrown at them.

Ugg…The PFD is different from a UBI and quite the current bone of contention. You, as the actual state, should be aware of how contorted the entire sporking budget is over a yearly varying amount that if far from supporting a person like a UBI but enough to get people to gut the uni, kick homeless people further onto the street and kids out of pre-k. Any functioning UBI can’t lead to yearly arguments about who to screw over to keep getting the UBI.Report

There’s a lot of details. For instance if UBI is pushed as a replacement for a whole host of current safety net payouts then it, maybe, could be done without breaking the bank. But if you try and tack it on in addition to the rest then the bank is done right busted. There remains the question as to whether the economy and technology has developed to the point where a UBI is imperative and current unemployment stats suggest that the answer is currently no. Personally, I’m pretty positively disposed to a UBI so long as it’s non-securitizable- No recipient can sell their annuity for a lump sum payment and the Gov won’t enforce any contract that tries to nor garnish the UBI for anything except maybe child support. Creditors can’t get their mitts on it.Report

The non-securitizable and non-garnishable seems essential to me. Creditors are still going to bust their ass to find ways to try and get in front of the individual to take a cut, but lets not make it easy.Report

Absolutely fundamental, otherwise there’ll be a massive sprawling industry designed expressly to food off 18 year old idiots (but I repeat myself) into signing away their UBI for a lump sum and profiting off it. And then the destitute idiots will still be with us.Report

Fwiw, I understand the concerns here, but from where I sit the worst outcomes of securitization and creditors seizing UBI payments are still preferable to no UBI.

I mean maybe not a buncha 18-y-o millionaires running around, but broadly if they have a business idea I don’t think it would be the worst thing. I think the extent of it will be limited. If you’re smart enough to become aware of and execute the idea you’re smart enough to see how much of a greater value it is to have the safety net under you, generally.

I should add that in terms of old-age poverty, Yang has recently made the rather major tweak to his plan to separate it from Social Security. (It’s rather amazing that wasn’t how he introduced it, but as far as I understand right now, it wasn’t). So the choice is between life-long income-qualifying benefits like SNAP, etc. and UBI, but not Medicare or Social Security, which stay in place. So if able-bodied kids securitized it and lost it, that would just leave them roughly where they are now.

…Also the protection against creditors should be attached. …But again, if it weren’t, worst case folks are still making progress against their debts or at least their monthlies with dollars they didn’t have before. They still had that overhang

If anything, UBI with or without a garnishment ban should probably be seen as one of the most debtor-favorable policies in the tool kit (and, yes, creditors would probably benefit a lot too). So what’s not to love?Report

I like UBI but I think the that one simple rule would make it better. The UBI would still be coming in and the creditors and scammers would still be able to try and wring the dollars out of the recipients as each 1k installment came in but they should have to do it the hard way. Otherwise the 17 year old American coming up on their 18th birthday would become the most hunted animal on the planet.Report

Preferable to no UBI? I’d agree it’d be preferable to no UBI but ungh, the predation; I mean we already have the military, every companies marketing department and universities panting after late teens; if you could convince some 18 year old idiot to sign away a 12k per year annuity for peanuts (and let’s not be naive, it’d be easy as hell)? It’d be a feeding frenzy of the worst kind and would inevitably spawn a sprawling thicket of new rules to try and protect those young idiots future selves from their present selves. Yes, some would sign on the line and make it big in business but a lot more would fail in business and a hell of a lot more would fish it away on a car or a trip or whatever. I mean we’re talking about 18 year olds here.

Way better to nip it in the bud and tell the entire business world “We don’t care what you get them to sign; unless they fathered/mothered a kid with you we won’t garnish, divert or assign even a penny of their monthly UBI to you and you’ll need to go to court to pursue your piece of each 1k installment on your own dime every month.”Report

The cynical part of me remembers the Fairtax days and how they got derailed by the 23%/30% math positioning problem… when it turns out they should have simply led with a bigger PREBATE, lowered the initial roll-out % and sold it as a revenue neutral(ish) income redistribution program. The gradual (and inevitable) increase of the VAT % could have been phases 2 and 3.

Now, I’m not 100% against a VAT (I’m a little concerned about adding a VAT as another separate income stream with no offset/adjustment to our current taxation regime) but I’m a little concerned about a UBI that gifts us a VAT with purchase.

Also, as JB noted above, I am quite literally the guy who wonders why my class won’t hoover up many of the UBI $$ with our (or really our overlord’s) rent seeking powers. Yang Twitter directed me to a UBI friendly article purports to show why that wouldn’t happen. It was a link to a Medium article and my response was :- |

Plus, and here I hate to go all liberte, fraternite, egalite on us all… but giving my household $36k on top of my earnings while asking the welfare recipient to chose between benefits or $12k (but not both) strikes this bleeding heart conservative as probably miscalculated on the justice scale.

My problem is that I want to believe in UBI, its my unbelief that needs help.Report

I, personally, am favorably inclined to a UBI but have a suspicion that it’s time hasn’t really come yet. But it remains one of the most plausible administrative bridges to a Star Trek future that I can think of.Report

Oh, no denial that I’m vastly oversimplifying (and maybe being a little cheeky). I’ve always considered UBI as an “in addition to” rather than “in the place of.” For me, it all comes down to something I repeat time and again: We’re a wealthy nation and we can pay for whatever we choose to. The question becomes: What do we choose to pay for?Report

A UBI would be really really (x10 more really’s) expensive. I don’t see any way you could enact it now without cutting some massive expenses to make room for it. But, again, I don’t know if the economy/tech is to the point where a UBI is needed rather than merely an interesting idea.Report

A big gob of the cost of a UBI would be ameliorated by just treating it as normal taxable income. It would replace a bunch of welfare by raising recipient’s income above eligibility thresholds. And then a binch more would be naturally clawed back by normal progressive income tax. So maybe only ~half of it would actually be new money. Not insignificant but not nearly as much as the initial calculation would say.

Alsotoo, I suspect it would have a much greater stimulative effect than any Republican tax-cut boondoggle aimed primarily at the already wealthy.Report

I’m on board with UBI, like in a big way. The biggest problems are political, but sometimes political problems can be solved. Maybe this one will be.

As an actual serious candidate for President, I’m not on board with Yang.

The first reason is extremely straightforward, and I bet will be mostly uncontroversial:

He has zero experience. Yes, Trump also has zero experience, but look how that turned out. Not that he appears to have any of the other issues that have made Trump such a wreck. He isn’t any more of a weird narcissist than any other businessman running for President of the United States, and I gotta agree with @Jaybird that I respect with the guy’s desire to think about and try to solve some problems.

The other issue I have I think people aren’t going to like. I think it’s kind of OK that they don’t like it because part of me doesn’t like it either.

But he has drawn a lot of his support from the absolute creepiest parts of the online political world. He doesn’t like that he has a bunch of creepy white nationalist supporters, which is good, but seems largely befuddled by them, which is not so great. And it’s worse because his inexperience and isolation from any sort of establishment is going to provide a lot of openings for them to insert themselves into his campaign, and in the (admittedly not at all likely) even of his victory, his Administration.

This feels like a horribly unfair thing to hold against a guy who appears to be well-intentioned and has no idea how to deal with a problem that I don’t have any idea how to deal with either. But fairness may not be the point, because one of the partisan impulses that is the most insidious (and one that has screwed me up no small number of times) is the one of thinking that being fair to candidates is the most important thing.

It’s not

Then again, since he’s not going to win, voting for him as a vote for UBI may still be Good, Actually.Report

He’s a whackjob that I think appeals to a few people who probably would not vote Democratic otherwise and are certainly not positioned strategically enough or are large enough to carry the electoral college presuming Democrats receive the normal turn out otherwise.Report

Because he’s running for political office and hasn’t shown that he knows how to do that job? People who vote or work in political party primaries tend to think politically. It’s more than just position papers. Presidential candidates need to persuade voters that they could staff a government, haggle with legislators, show solidarity with a variety of voting populations, deal with foreign leaders, and so on.Report

So @jaybird’s first candidate is criticized for not having any policy prescriptions and his second one is criticized for being too focused on policy… I’m looking forward to finding out who his Goldilocks candidate is.Report

I’m not actually criticizing Yang. I don’t plan on giving him any thought, positive or negative, until he shows some signs of gaining traction. But the question was what people who liked his policy positions but aren’t going out and working for him might be concerned about. It isn’t all about policy.Report

Whackjob might have been too strong but Yang remains the candidate of the reddit set. I have my doubts on UBI being successful considering as Erik Loomis states, centuries of American notions of self-worth are wrapped up in work and labor. People will fight for wages and better work environments but they often see a lot of value in labor itself.

The people who like UBI tend to be a handful of highly-educated misfits who discovered that their passions are not exactly financially rewarding. This is not going to convince people to go for Yang.Report

There is nothing wrong with his ideas, he’s trying to make things better. Personally, I’m not sure I’d want him in the Oval Office*, but I wouldn’t simply dismiss his ideas as whack. As someone noted, we have a long history of doing variations of the same things that tend to fail anyway. Might as well try something new.

*VP maybe, or somewhere in the administration where his ideas can be heard.

PS I am a highly educated misfit whose passion is very financially rewarding, thank you very much.Report

I was more interested in his HUMAN-CENTERED CAPITALISM policy program.

I can see why he pushes ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. But I’m more interested in a candidate who can lead with Human Centered Capitalism and what that might mean.

My impression of Yang from this exercise is that, yes, he’s looking at things from different angles… and I appreciate that. He strikes me at this point as more of a coalition of ideas in search of a leader instead of the other way around. That’s ok, we need idea guys too.Report

If you look in the mirror one morning and think that “smart affable guy with some interesting ideas” is qualification enough to lead the most powerful country in the world, then you just might be a whackjob.

If after careful thought and deliberation, you conclude that the greatest threat facing America is the lack of a UBI, then yeah, you really are a whackjob.Report

Everyone who writes for this blog has a lot of good ideas, probably better than his.

Good policy ideas are just cocktail party favors, things that without the requisite skills and organization are meaningless chatter.

He’s never held office, never run for office, never lead a large complex organization with competing factions even remotely similar to the US Government. And worse, brags about that fact.

Most of all, he seems utterly detached from what motivates and inspires the current political debate.

Touching on my exchange with George, its like a guy at a initial meeting of Boston colonists debating the merits of a war for independence, piping up that what the colonies really need is a postal system, and interstate turnpikes to connect them.

So what ideas does a candidate *have* to be focused on to be focusing on the right ideas for this political moment (apparently to the exclusion of UBI)?

Your experience point is valid; my blue-sky vision for the trajectory of Mr. Yang this cycle would be that he gains enough support to force some of the experienced, top candidates to at least start to have to talk about some of the crap-ass reasons they have for not having this proposal themselves, and perhaps be offered a position of some kind in an administration or support for future political endeavors which could lead to the experience that could fill in the gap that you aren’t wrongly concerned about.Report

We have the dominant political party which has the support of about 40% of Americans which has become hostile to the idea of liberal democracy.

They have contempt for the other 60% and refuse to consider them co-equal citizens worthy of rights and protection under the law.

That’s a pretty important thing to be focused on.

Because honestly, I wandered across places like Quillette, Powerline, and Gateway Pundit and seen conservatives- Josh Hawley’s crowd- talking earnestly about a UBI or some form of massive government intervention in the marketplace to protect workers from displacement. Subsidies for coal, or bailing out small agricultural towns, maybe some massive military or infrastructure sort of thing.

But…

For rural, hardworking pickup truck driving Real Americans only.

So no, I don’t want Socialism, if it is of the National variety.Report

I mean most of the candidates really aren’t focused on that stuff that much more than Yang. They have their plans for helping the material needs of Americans, and that’s mostly what they focus on, too. And Yang has stuff to say about that stuff as well.Report

I don’t think Yang has the marketing savy or the debate skills needed to go up against Trump. It is going to a brutal battle to control the media and attention. I have seen exactly no interviews where aggressively argues, only calm detailed explanations. That will not get it done in the debates let alone twitter. Hillary got almost totally shut out of the narrative of the 2016 election, outside of a few negative things. Whomever, blue team puts up is going to have to be a lot louder, smarter in marketing, and willing to what is needed to “stand up to Trump”. I will happily change my opinion if Yang goes on a show like Hannity or debates Bill O’Riley and is able to get aggressively confrontational while still steering the conversation.

I think he would be great VP pick. He would do well in a debate vs. Pence.

Like it or not, Politics at the National level is no longer really Liberal vs. Conservative it is Pro-Trump vs. Anti-Trump.Report

I concur especially because my thoughts on Trump are that he is suffering from serious cognitive decline and is this makes him further descend further into blowhard mode. My thought today was he always looks like he is in fullscream like a less intelligent version of Lee J. Cobb’s bigot from 12 Angry Men.

Trump or his staff seem to think his best bet for 2020 is a repeat of 2016 (concede the popular vote but win the electoral college) and he is going to do it through being a pure racial demagogue. Too bad we can’t nominate Henry Fonda but Harris or Warren are probably the best bets.Report

I think he has managed to mostly calibrate his racial demagoguery, I doubt it will change much from here. I expect he plot a path to victory based on the data, like 2016. Being able to read crowds to adjust messaging and platform will be a huge part again. Whatever gets increasing numbers of people to show up at rallies and cheer will be his platform. I don’t know what policy and rhetoric crowds will be buying 6 months, 12 months, 15 months from now, but it is a fair bet Trump will be selling it.Report

Yang wants to ban the ancient and holy rite of circumcision. That makes him a no in my book. The brit millah is one of the most important aspects of Jewish identity. We will not stop doing it to satisfy modernity.Report

Hrm. Maybe going after brisses that aren’t done in sterile environments might be the way to go, then.

(I went to a briss at a neighbor’s house back in the 90’s. In their kitchen!)

Surgery needs to be done by a medically trained professional who has been licensed by the state of California (or wherever) and if you engage in unlicensed surgery, there are approximately 700 laws that cover that.

Have it done in a hospital, by a specialist, or not at all.

(To be honest, I can’t believe that they had people with religious degrees, of all things, in charge of doing this for a few thousand years.)Report

@LeeEsq — Honest question: over time, do you think that more liberally minded Jews could come to accept delaying circumcision until adolescence, when the child has enough “self concept” to understand what is happening? Obviously the more orthodox types would never accept this, but could we convince those more liberal?

It is a valid issue of bodily autonomy. It does permanently alter the body, which indeed has an effect on sensation and sexual function.

The point: why does it have to happen to infants? “Because it is written” or “because it is tradition” are both reasonable answers, but God did not give us the capacity for reason with the expectation that we would not use it.Report

Possibly? But I still contend that while it may be a valid issue of bodily autonomy, it is, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty minor one, and if it isn’t connected to a broad, compelling, consistent case (which to be blunt rarely seems to happen in the Wilds of Online) it’s unlikely to work,

And you’re still left with the issue of more conservative people rejecting it, which leads to those enforcement costs, which may well not be trivial.

Honestly if you want to stop it as a widespread practice, allowing for religious exemptions is likely the easiest route forward.Report

I’m absolutely not suggesting any kind of enforcement (under the assumption that trying to force orthodox Jews to break their religious laws would be … not effective).

I am suggesting a culture change. Even if only N% of Jews change their practices, that is N% of people who get to make a choice about their bodies.

I certainly think the practice should be stopped in general, but that’s a separate issue.

Also, I’d question how “minor” it is. The weight of a permanent body alteration depends on the value it has to the person themselves, not the value it has to a bystander with an opinion. I’ve met people who very much regretted their circumcision.Report

Not really. The Reform Judaism movement of the 19th century did all sorts of innovations to make Judaism seem less strange to non-Jews. They moved Shabbat from Saturday to Sunday, got rid of kosher laws and Hebrew, etc. They debated getting rid of circumcision but it was considered so essential to Jewish identity that it was a bridge too far. It was kept. I can’t see any current Jewish movement go against it. It really is just seen as one of the things that is absolutely required.Report

When I was born, circumcision was the norm even among the goyim. (I was born in a military hospital, and suspect that the surgeons and the barbers trained together, but that’s another story.) The reasons were sanitary rather than religious, obviously. And remembering my sanitary habits as a youngster, I was probably better off not having a foreskin. I think the first time I ever saw an uncircumcised penis was in a porno movie. While I don’t doubt, veronica, that you know people who regretted circumcision, my own experience has been that nobody much cared, having nothing to compare it with.Report

Well, that’s because it didn’t really happen that way. Women thought it up and made them do it.

This comports with the idea that the Biblical J author was a woman. Joseph’s brothers are jealous of his pretty coat? Samson’s power comes from his long flowing hair? That’s not how men think. So the J author just wrote the crazy ritual into the story because she liked her men to have a certain look.

Then all the guys were in a panic because if the story is true, and if they’re really Jews and not worshipers of Ba’al or Ra, they shouldn’t have that extra bit of skin. They’d risk getting found out when they use a public urinal (Back then the entire Middle East was a public urinal, which is why it was covered in sand).

Back alley circumcisions ensued, quickly replaced by less traumatic infant circumcisions (“If Joseph don’t remember the crazy place where he was last week, he ain’t gonna remember this, either,”) and the rest is history.

And frankly, once mankind developed clothes we no longer needed the extra armor protection. All it did after that is fill up with mud, lice, fleas, mites, crabs, lint, and occasionally coins and Monopoly tokens, which can make playing the family game with Uncle Louie pretty darned awkward, let me tell you.Report

Except out West (where hippies are prevalent), most men in the US are circumcised. Rates in the Midwest approach 90%. It’s also the norm throughout Africa and the Middle East, and used to be just as prevalent in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

This meant Nazi prison camp guards couldn’t tell which American POWs were Jewish and which weren’t. Thus, they had to ask. An American master sergeant from Knoxville was named as Righteous Among the Nations for having all his men stand forth as Jews when the Germans were trying to sort them for execution. He stared down the German commander holding a pistol to his head, saying that all the American soldiers were Jewish and that the commander would have to shoot each and every one of them, and then he’d be tried for war crimes. The German commander walked away in frustration. Saving the life of even one was worth every foreskin on the planet.Report

I now have an excuse to tell one of my favorite stories. Decades ago, I asked a Jewish friend of mine (at least I thought he was a friend) about the little black boxes — tfillen — that I had seen Jewish men wearing on their foreheads while worshiping. I asked what was in them. My “friend” asked me if I knew the story of Abraham. In those days, I was pretty conversant with the Hebrew scriptures for a goy, so I showed off my ecumenical knowledge, including the bit about Abraham’s covenant with G_d and circumcision as the symbol of that covenant. My “friend” asked if I had ever wondered what happened to the foreskin afterward. I hadn’t. He told me, with a straight face, that it was put into the tfillen so worshipers would be reminded of the covenant. Made sense to me, and years later, as he probably knew I would, I recited this “fact” in mixed company, to predictable reactions. If I ever find the sonofabitch again……Report

There’s going to be a shift from “I belong to my parents” to “I belong to myself” to “I belong to the guarantor of myself” to “The guarantor operates for our good under a new covenant” to “these are the things the covenant requires before we release you to yourself”

I had great fun writing out a proper Nietzschean response, but realized it might be misinterpreted. I’m assuming you’re just seeing how far we can take this before, well, someone writes a proper Nietzschean response?Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.